“I’m only showing you this, so you can see that someone was found. All I know is male. Could be older. Could be a sodding drunk teenager. We don’t know yet. What I don’t want is you seeing this on the news, and getting a nasty shock. I’m going to be hounding people to try and find out, but I didn’t get anywhere with the local plod, and I can’t guarantee our locals are going to be any more helpful.”
He nodded, staring at the table surface.
“I don’t know how to feel right now. I mean, with so much time passing, without word from him, I feel like it could be true that something terrible has happened… but I can’t let myself believe it, until someone proves it to me. I can’t write him off like that.”
I nodded. “I completely understand. I don’t want to put ideas in your head, or give you any false hope either way. I just want to be clear with you about what I find, as I find it.”
He reached for his own phone.
“I was going to call you this afternoon too. I, uh… something came my way.”
I felt a wave of nausea, as I pondered the things that he might be about to mention. Somehow I just knew that things were about to get much worse, really fucking fast.
He was looking at something on his phone, but didn’t show me yet.
“A neighbour of mine called today. They, uh… they’ve been away on a cruise. Some couples thing, with lots of stopovers. They were gone about six weeks in total.”
I frowned, wondering how the fuck this had anything to do with anything at all.
“Okay…”
He glanced at the screen again, swiping a finger over it lightly. Like he didn’t want the screen to time out.
“They had a ton of mail to look through. You know how it is. Lots of stuff piles up. Anyway… some of my mail was mixed in with theirs. Our postman isn’t particularly careful sometimes.”
I clenched my fists under the table, waiting for the next punch to come.
“They found this.” He turned his phone to me, and I leaned forward. What in the actual fuck!
This changes everything.